Singing for my supper

I recently picked up some books I've been promising myself to read for years, one of which is Patsy Rodenburg's extraordinary The Actor Speaks . While much of Rodenburg's book is the building blocks of actually making and manipulating sounds, there is a LOT (and I mean lot ) of the philosophy of acting and LIFE mixed in. Best of all, coming from the British tradition of theatrical training (of which I'm very proud to be a part myself - not a day goes by when I don't thank the RNCM in one way or another for what they gave me) voice and body technique is not skipped in favour of emotive expression, but the why's and wherefore of how one turns that physical technique into text and, ultimately, heightened emotion are explored ... which is precisely the journey we take as singers. One of the best books I've read in years - I can't believe I waited this long to buy it. I can see it's going to become a constant companion, since so much of it easily ...

I'm not quite sure how it went from the carefully planned work curve I mapped out for this month to zOMG, but it has. So, this is just a short update. I suspect part of the sudden feeling of 0-60 comes from losing a lot of "normal" daily life to the weather (I believe we're now up to about 80" of snow for the season, and it's just started dumping it AGAIN), and also to the wonderful 4-day-trip to Vancouver to take up a friend's invitation to see the dress rehearsal of the Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony. The trip itself was wonderful, even if travelling in-between snowstorms was more than a tad complicated! But we managed to make it both out and back, so one mustn't complain. In the meantime, back to memorizing a LOT of music for a lrecital I'm doing next month. Watch this space for more news!